Flint Southwestern Colts Unite

All you Southwestern grads should check out Southwestern Reunion. It's a social networking site that's a great way to get in touch with old friends, post photos and get info on the school, which is hosting a 40th reunion on June 13.

From Flint to New Orleans

Flint Southwestern grad Mark Ingram is running the ball for Alabama against Utah in the Sugar Bowl tonight.

Flint Portraits: Thomas Wirt

Thomas Wirt — a.k.a. Jar With Most — has graciously let me use several of his photos on Flint Expatriates. Here's an interview where he discusses his photography and his life in Flint.

The Jade Shoppe

Most Flint Expatriates define themselves by where they went to school. What’s your academic history?

I grew up on the west side of Flint, my family's house is on Downey Street, two blocks away from Zimmerman School. My parents still live there. I went to Zimmerman, when it was an elementary school, from kindergarten to the second grade, 1963 to 1966. In 1966 Eisenhower Elementary School was built, and I went there from 3rd to 6th grade, then back to Zimmerman for junior high, from 7th to 9th grade. I went to Southwestern from 1974 to 1976, but I skipped a lot of school, and had to make up my last year of school at the Flint Schools of Choice on 5th Avenue, graduating with a Southwestern diploma in 1977.

A mural in Brush Alley

How did you get started in photography?

I got interested in photography in the mid '70s, it helped a lot that my father had a darkroom in our home's basement that I used. My father worked at The Flint Journal, and later at Smith-Bridgman's, as a commercial artist in the 1960s.

After I graduated from high school, in 1977, I went to work at JD Color Lab on Corunna Road, working in darkrooms and developing film. I worked there until 1983, then went to work at a 1-hour photo lab in the Eastland Mall (now the Courtland Center) until 1986. At that time, I wanted to get another job, but I couldn't find anything in the photographic field in the Flint area. I moved to Lansing in 1986, and worked at a custom photographic lab until 1997, when film-based photography started to decline. I am no longer employed in the field of photography. I take more pictures now with my digital camera then I ever did with my film cameras when I was working in photo labs, and when I had my own darkroom.

The D. Levasseur Building on the corner of North Franklin Avenue and Leith Street.

You have a gift for capturing the reality of Flint in an affectionate way, if that’s the right term. How do you choose your subjects?

Some of the subjects I choose are for nostalgic reasons, places that were important to me when I was growing up, such as Southwestern and Zimmerman schools, and St. Matthews school, where my sisters went to school. My parents had a hobby shop in "The Jade Shoppe" building, before I was born. Your observation that my shots "seem to capture the promise Flint once held and the reality of its present state" and "are depressing and nostalgic at the same time" is very astute, that is exactly what I think about and feel when I see these scenes and take the pictures.

Stevens Moving and Storage near the site of the old Buick City factory complex.

Where are you now?

I've been living in Lansing, only about an hour away from Flint, for the last 20 years, and come back to Flint kind of sporadically, sometimes I go several months between visits. Being away for such long periods, I haven't seen the changes that slowly happen, and I'm struck by how different it is from when I lived there. Like how there is razor wire all over the place. I don't remember seeing that when I lived there. And how there are almost no signs of the factories that were once what Flint was all about. I think that if I was living in Flint all along, I may not be as interested in my home town as I am now. When I started taking my digital photos of Flint a few years ago, it was just for my own collection, I just wanted to have some pictures of home that I could look at. I've done Google searches for pictures of Flint, especially the Flint that I remember growing up, and could find almost nothing on the Internet about it, so I decided to share the photos that I have with the world. I will continue taking, and posting more pictures of Flint.

The Durant Hotel renovation project

Age of innoncence

A.C. Spark Plug decorated for the holidays. (Photo courtesy of Lori Wenzel)

Lori Wenzel looks back on the Flint she remembers:

I feel as nostalgic as you do about this city. I’m 49 years-old and went to Pierson Elementary and Zimmerman Junior High before graduating from Southwestern in 1976. I grew up on Lyndon Avenue off Harvard & Pierson Roads. I now live in Grand Blanc Township. The older I get, the sadder I feel about “what used to be.”

My mom worked at Federal's Department store. I still have my nametag from working at Monkey Wards when downtown was bustling and fun. I later worked at AC Spark Plug and just retired two years ago. Even that was sad. When I hired in, there were about 7,000 people there. When I retired, just 1,500.

There was a real innocence when I was growing up in Flint. We hitchhiked; rode our bikes to Flushing Park; weren't scared to walk to our friends’ houses after dark; went to Mary's Sunshine Food Stores for cigarettes that were 50 cents a pack; hung out at the fountain at Genesee Valley; drank M & S red pop with New Era potato chips; and went to concerts at the old IMA and at Richfield Park for their Super Sundays. I even have my ticket stub from my first concert at IMA. It was Deep Purple in 1972.

I went down to the Hot Dog Stand in Grand Blanc the other night for the Back To The Bricks Cruise. I was looking for someone with my first car — a 1969 Grand Prix. I found one parked along the route. The guy let me take pictures and sit in it. I was 16 when I got that car. It was a huge thrill!

I hung around with four other girls through junior and high school. After graduation, we all went our separate ways. Luckily, I reconnected with them a few years ago, and now we go on a trip every summer together. It's great how we all still get along when our lives are so different. We still talk about what we did in the good old days. We had lots of fun.

I'm thrilled that I grew up when and where I did, so I can remember when people were good and we weren't scared for our safety like it is now. I can't even visit my childhood home because it's a drive-by neighborhood now.

An unlikely alliance

Bernard Rosenberg is back. The Alaskan adventurer, fishing guide, art teacher and writer who detailed his younger days for Flint Expatriates last May, remembers his unlikely friendship with the man known as Wild Bill.


Wild Bill was a greaser I sought out when we both went to Southwestern High School in the sixties because he hunted, and I wanted to do the same. Since none of my surrounding city-slick peers owned guns or even knew how to shoot one, he was my logical choice. I clearly remember bringing a box of shot shells to school to impress him. Then, it was pretty much up to him to carry through with my overture, and he did this in the shortest of time by indicating he would come by my house to pick me up on a Saturday morning so that we could practice with shooting clays.

I’d been trap shooting before with my father. Never, had I done it with a friend, and now this black leather jacketed hood from hell was scheduled to come to my world and show me his ways.

He did.

Wild Bill showed up at my doorstep driving a coal black 56 Chevy that was every bit as dark as his greased back hair. Riding in the front seat right next to him was a white and brown long-haired setter that was his bird dog and constant companion. In the back seat was a case of clays, a cardboard box full of individual packages of 25 count shells, and two zipped-up leather gun cases that held shotguns. Along with the guns was a cooler of beer, a loaf of bread, a jar of mustard, and a meat package wrapped tightly with several pounds of pressed baloney.

His car radio was cranked up blaring out Motown tunes, and strewn about the front seat were discarded packs of empty cigarette wrappers, two dozen issues of yesterday’s newspaper, a beat-up and dog-eared men’s magazine, and so many empty crushed tin cans of Stroh’s beer that a half dozen of them fell out when I opened the passenger door. This was his world, and I slid right into it alongside his four legged friend. Believe me, if I had a tail it would have wagged just as happily as his setter when it licked my face. I was glad to be there.

Truth reveals itself in times like these, and it was the bond between guns and the outdoors that had brought us together. Though we were both city kids from two different sides of the tracks, the rails of our new friendship led us right out of town and into the neighboring fields. There were farms and woods once we left Flint, and in short time the pavement surrendered itself to the endless miles of dirt thoroughfares that belonged to Wild Bill. Though he did not have a stream, he had his dirt roads, and his life had grown up riding them. Now it was his time to show his ways to another, and I supposed that’s why he became so attentive to me. Right away I knew he cared, and that truth was as obvious as what rode with him in his front seat. Now, he had two companions.

As we drove deeper into the country Bill explained that many of the fields and the accompanying woods would hold small game for us to hunt in the coming months. He touted them as loaded with opportunity for squirrel, rabbit, and pheasant, and all I needed to do was to practice with him until mid-October, which was the opening of the small game hunting season. Since this was early September, there was plenty of time for us to get ready for the hunt, and since shooting pheasants was his preference, the more I practiced the better would be my aim when I went out with him. That suited me fine, and by the time we had wound our way to an old barn in the middle of nowhere, his practice area lay in wait for our the guns, shells, clays, and lunch. There was no one except just us and the late Michigan summer.

I learned a lot from this new friend. We split everything all the way from the cases of shot shells to the clays we threw. Wild Bill was an excellent shooter, and his twelve gauge was an excellent gun. For me, he lent his sixteen and I took to it real quick. We spent hours at his private range and for many Saturdays returned to it. All of those earlier years with my BB gun were now traded in for larger arms and greater ammunition. The memories of tiny birds were replaced by spinning clays and I got pretty good. By the time mid-October rolled around I was ready for the hunt.

It was always the same. I worked at the Fruit House on Saturdays and hunted on Sundays. By sun up I would find Bill parked in my driveway and ready to go. His dog would be in the front seat and the guns would be in the back. Motown would blare out the radio and the baloney and beer would always be there. The cigarette packs never ended, and the crushed beer cans would fall out every time I opened the door. This was our routine. Every Sunday began at six and ended by three. We spent eight hours on the roads once a week for the entire four months of hunting season. That’s a hundred and twenty eight hours each season with the biggest greaser in school. We did this for three years until Wild Bill graduated a year before me and volunteered to go to Vietnam.

It was one of the most adventuresome times of my entire adolescent life.

No one could ever figure out our friendship. Crossing the line between boys who wore penny loafers and boys who wore black leather jackets just wasn’t done in our high school, yet we crossed it. We each grew in our association with each other because of common bonds. Yet he was wild. I saw this all the way from the bruises on his face to the days he was suspended from school for fighting. Mercilessly, he tackled his foes as life tackled him. He was suspended, arrested, barred, and censored for many things, yet he never failed in his friendship to me. Even when he came back from war he returned to my life, and through my urging went to my university to get a degree to teach via governmental paybacks.

Bill is now gone from my life. We had a terrible fall from friendship during the last of my university days when he became violent and turned on me and almost beat me senseless. I smashed a glass pitcher and went for him with a sheared broken-glass handle in order to save my life. He jumped through a plate-glass window to escape. That’s the last I saw of him.

I didn't hear about him for several years until a school-board attorney called and asked me if I thought this person was capable of carrying through on his threat to take a teacher’s life. My advice was to take him seriously. Those three hunting seasons computed to three hundred and seventy four hours with a man who pulled the trigger each and every time and seldom missed. After all, he hadn’t earned the nickname Wild Bill for nothing.

Yet my recollections of Wild Bill are not dominated by this bad ending. He was simply my friend from the other side who taught me his ways and showed me his roads. I will always remember him in that coal black Chevy with his dog and me right beside him. We were good friends, and that has left me with a most cherished memory.

Photo of the 1956 Chevy courtesy of photographer John P Sullivan.